


Asymptotes

by jtjenna (pornographicpenguin)



Series: A Mathematical Way of Thinking [2]
Category: Bleach
Genre: Established Relationship, Kissing, M/M, a series about mATH, chad waxes poetic about both math and uryuu it's glorious, yes this is a series now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-11
Updated: 2015-03-11
Packaged: 2018-03-17 07:44:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3521105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pornographicpenguin/pseuds/jtjenna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What’s wrong?”</p><p>Gaze fixed firmly on Chad’s shoulder, Uryuu responds very calmly, “Nothing.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Asymptotes

In order to avoid Chad’s kiss, Uryuu has to wrench his chin out Chad’s fingers with a degree of force that Chad is fairly certain cannot be summoned accidentally.  He lets his hand fall back to his side while Uryuu ducks his head, tucking his chin in close to his body.  This is the fifth time this week.

In the dim lighting of his apartment, Chad swallows down the lump in his throat.  “What’s up?”

Uryuu shifts his gaze from Chad’s shoes to the shoulder of his shirt.  “What?” he asks.

Gently clearing his throat, Chad rephrases.  “What’s wrong?”

Gaze fixed firmly on Chad’s shoulder, Uryuu responds very calmly, “Nothing.”

Chad does not believe him for a split second.

Stifling a sigh, Chad places a firm hand on Uryuu’s shoulder.  Underneath the thin fabric of his school issued button-down, Chad can feel the sharp curve of his collarbone.  “You know you can, uh…” Chad pauses, trying to find the words he needs to express himself that don’t sound like unfortunately cheesy lines from a romance movie -- and subsequently gives up after a solid ten seconds pass and nothing pops into his mind.  “Tell me...anything, right?”

Chad has never been good with words.  He watches Uryuu adjust his glasses, elbows tucked in awkwardly to his body, and respond with nothing more than an uncomfortable-sounding grunt.  Being with Uryuu definitely hasn’t changed that.

Chad grunts awkwardly back, gaze sliding from Uryuu’s face to his own couch off to the right.  He’s never been good at verbalizing at all, and the trait is coming back to bite him in the ass now.  “Um,” he says, trailing his hand down from Uryuu’s shoulder to his upper arm and back again.  Uryuu sways under the force.  “You haven’t, been, uh…”  Chad feels his fingers tighten on Uryuu’s shoulder involuntarily, but Uryuu doesn’t comment.  “You know we have kissed already.”  Chad can feel as Uryuu’s shoulders stiffen underneath his hand and adds, more on instinct than on any actual thought of helping the situation, “Like, a lot.”

Uryuu’s skin is almost ridiculously pale -- whenever he loses a few hours of sleep to studying or training it gets almost translucent, yellow bags under his eyes and his cheeks so pasty Chad swears if he looked hard enough he could see the muscles stretched across his face.  Uryuu blushes.  “I -- “ he stutters.  “I know that.”

“Is there any…” Chad pauses, “particular reason you’re…”  Chad watches as Uryuu digs his own nails into the flesh of his underarm as he searches for the word he’s looking for.  “Nervous.”

“I’m not nervous.”

By this point, Uryuu has directed his gaze more closely to Chad’s cheek than his shoulder, but he still won’t look Chad in the eye.  He grunts, and then leans down, twisting his neck at that uncomfortable angle necessary to get at Uryuu’s lips when he won’t tilt his head up, and instead ends up making contact with Uryuu’s cheek.

Pulling away, Chad grunts illustratively.  Uryuu rubs at his temple.  “Okay, okay, point taken,” he says, tapping the toe of his shoe against Chad’s.  Uryuu continues to gaze distractedly at their feet for a few long seconds before he speaks again, fingers clenched in the well-worn cotton of Chad’s shirt.  “I, uh….”  He trails off.  It may just be a trick of the light, but Chad thinks he can see a drop of sweat slide down Uryuu’s forehead.  “I don’t know how to say this.”

Doing his best to stifle the anxiety that rises from his gut and up into his throat, Chad takes a deep, quiet breath in.  “Take your time.”

Uryuu does.  The two of them stand there, the epitome of uncomfortable.  Chad focuses on the feeling of Uryuu’s breath hot and damp on the exposed triangle of skin where the top few buttons of his shirt are unbuttoned, the tight knot of Uryuu’s tie in the hollow of his neck, the few shades of difference in hue between the toes of their shoes.  Through the slats in Chad’s blinds, he can see the street lamps start to flicker on.

And, don’t get Chad wrong -- he had told Uryuu to take his time, and if he needed time to find the words to express whatever it was he needed to, Chad would definitely give him that -- but after a solid minute of complete and utter silence, Chad has to wonder if Uryuu had just spontaneously lost use of his vocal cords.  “Uryuu -- “

“I -- “  The beginnings of their individual sentences stumble over one another, and they both fall quiet after the first words.  Chad holds himself very still and waits, afraid that he may have disrupted the delicate ecosystem of Uryuu’s mind with his interruption so much so that whatever Uryuu had been about to say is lost forever.

After what seems like an eternity, Uryuu says, “Um,” and lifts a hand up to fidget with his glasses.  And that’s what it is, Chad realizes:  fidgeting.  Something to do with his hands while he thinks.  “Well, I -- “ he tugs at the edge of his sleeve, and then adjusts his glasses again.  From this close, Chad can see the ragged, nubby ends of his fingernails, and frowns. “I’ve been doing some reading.”

Chad grunts rather blandly.  He tries not to think about that statement too hard, because he knows if he contemplates exactly how stereotypical of a thing that is for Uryuu to say, Chad knows he’s going to start laughing.

But despite that, silence continues to hang heavy between the both of them.  Chad has never been particularly good at words in general (and, in his opinion, Uryuu’s never-ending spew of words isn’t particularly effective in most situations, either) so he’s at a loss for how to broach the topic, while Uryuu seems wholly unwilling to.  Chad tries not to think too hard about what it might be -- it’ll get him nowhere fast, he’s sure -- but he can’t help the lump of unease that sits dense and heavy in his gut.  He really does like Uryuu and all of his convoluted rationalizations, his nervous ticks, his stupidly strong drive that fits hand-in-hand with Chad’s own.  He would really not like to lose that.             

As he watches Uryuu once again fuss with his glasses, his collar, and the button on his shirt, he wants to grab Uryuu by the shoulders and pull him into Chad’s chest until his boyfriend can find it in himself to slow down, stop thinking, and spend a few minutes just _being_.

Chad, however, doesn’t do that.  He keeps his hands to himself and asks, “What...kind of reading?”

“Some scientific articles,” Uryuu says.  He pulls at the sleeve of his school uniform -- it probably is getting a little too small for him, Chad notices, the sleeve riding up about an inch above his wrist.  “About kissing.”

Chad grunts an affirmative before his mind really gets around to moving past cursory acceptance and onto actually process what Uryuu had just said.  “Wait...kissing?”

Uryuu adjusts his glasses.  Chad grabs his wrists (a little too hard, he’s guessing, from the way that Uryuu starts against his hold) and brings them down between the two of them.  He tries to make the contact seem comforting rather than annoyed.  He’s not sure how well he succeeds.

“Yeah,” Uryuu says, the words squeaking out of his vocal cords like a poorly-oiled door hinge.

Chad pauses for a long second, combing his memory for a single _scientific article_ he had ever read about kissing.  “You mean,” he starts, “like WikiHow?”

Uryuu yanks his hands away.  “No, not -- I’m not _fourteen!_ ” he barks, incredulous.  He’s got that look on his face that, to Chad, looks a bit like a bird that’s had its feathers ruffled out out place.  Usually it’s the kind of thing that Chad only gets to see after Ichigo’s said something particularly thoughtless.

Chad shrugs.  

Uryuu sighs.  “People do like -- surveys and studies on that kind of thing,” he says.

“Yeah,” Chad grunts.  He lets the air hang empty for a long moment before he continues, “They also write WikiHow articles.”

Even in the dim lighting of Chad’s apartment, he can see Uryuu’s cheeks flush a deep red.  “Shut up!” he spits, drawing his arms up towards himself in a decidedly self-conscious gesture.

Carefully, Chad runs a hand from Uryuu’s shoulder to his elbow in one long, conscious motion.  “Sorry,” he says.  Uryuu lets a little breath out at that, and the muscles in his shoulders relax.  It’s pretty easy to get Uryuu riled up, Chad’s figured out, but just as easy to get him to calm down.  Uryuu has little to no awareness of his own physicality, most of the time.

“It’s fine,” Uryuu says.

More silence.  Not the comfortable kind, either, but the strained kind, tension weighing down every word.  It makes Chad nervous.  He’s not good at words, and he has the feeling that this is one of those situations where the words he picks are particularly important.  He scours his brain for a way to prod the conversation along and comes up wholly blank.

Uryuu shifts from foot to foot.  “I…” from behind the frames of his glasses, he gives the space above Chad’s left shoulder a harsh glare.  “The thing I was going to say seems stupid now.”

Chad pauses.  “It’s...probably not stupid.”  He swallows around the lump in his throat.  “If you’re upset about it.”

Uryuu makes a weird, cut-off noise.  It sounds to Chad a bit like the noise someone would make if they were choking on their own tongue.  “I mean…”  He adjusts his glasses.  Chad resists the urge to sigh.  “I don’t think the fact that I’m worrying about it precludes it from being stupid.”

Something about that -- it’s not that it’s overtly negative, and it’s probably true, because Uryuu does worry about lots of things that seem inconsequential to Chad -- but it strikes him as wrong.  He takes Uryuu’s hands in his, intertwining their fingers this time.  They fit together surprisingly well, considering the size difference.

“If you care about it…” Chad says.  He pauses a long moment, trying to put words to what he’s thinking.  “It’s not stupid.”

“I could care about stupid things,” Uryuu says, his tone taking on that annoyed, preachy quality Chad usually only hears when he lectures Ichigo for saying something particularly shortsighted.  “And that’s exactly what I just said.”

“Well it’s…” Chad falls silent for a long moment as he tries to figure out what he wants to say.  In the meantime, Uryuu stares at him with markedly anxious eyes.  Chad wonders if he even has any idea that he does that.  “It’s important, probably.”  Chad swallows.  “If you’re worried.”

Uryuu gives him a look that Chad finds himself unable to peg as wholly confused or disdainful, and stands somewhere in between.

“Things you worry about are important,” Chad attempts to clarify.  Uryuu’s expression doesn’t change in the slightest.  “To, uh.  Me.  So you should...”  Chad feels his palms break out in a sweat, blood rushing to his cheeks.  “Uh...talk,” he swallows thickly.  “About it.”

Uryuu glances away, mutters something lowly that sounds a bit like, “Oh my god.”  Chad gets to watch as Uryuu’s eyes turn steely with determination and feel it as Uryuu clenches his hands tightly in his own.  “I read a bunch of scientific articles about bad kissing as a reason cited for around fifty percent of breakups and -- “ he swallows.  “Stuff like that.”  Those last few words stumble out of Uryuu’s mouth in a messy, unorganized jumble, as if his saying what he means faster will make the situation that much less embarrassing.

Chad figures Uryuu doesn’t end up finding himself particularly successful in that respect given that in the following few moments, Chad realizes that he has no idea how to respond to that.  A strange kind of silence cycles through the room:  moments where Chad thinks he can find the words to say something alternating with moments where he feels the crushing weight of communication weigh hard on his shoulders.

“And now I feel -- self-conscious,” Uryuu adds, as if stating the obvious would help alleviate the frankly oppressive silence lingering over the two of them.

That sense of wrongness increases at least twofold, but Chad can’t quite put his finger on what it is about the whole thing that sets him on edge.  Because it’s true -- stuff like that is probably pretty important.  There’s nothing immediately wrong he can pick out about what Uryuu’s saying, nothing obvious like there usually is.  He doesn’t know what to say.

Chad grunts.  Uryuu stares.

Except -- “You...do realize we have already kissed like...a lot, right?”

Uryuu, his mouth forcedly tilted into a neutral expression, says, “You already said that earlier.”  He pauses.  Chad can feel it as he starts to bounce his foot against the ground.  “And, obviously.”

“Then,” Chad starts, slowly.  Uryuu likes to pretend he’s extremely rational, but in reality he’s probably one of the most nonsensical people Chad has ever met -- at least, when it comes to the much less clear-cut world of emotions, when the options are a lot more than just A through D or the formulaic pattern of an essay.  That being said -- Chad isn’t much better.  “Doesn’t it seem kind of...illogical to worry about it now?”

“Well, I mean, it still affects -- _yes_.”  One of Uryuu’s hands jerks in Chad’s grip, like he had forgotten they had been holding hands, and had been moving his hand to fidget with himself some more.  “I mean, I haven’t -- I’m not particularly -- “  He looks at Chad with this nauseous twist of his lips, and once he sees it Chad doesn’t find himself able to shake the idea that it’s an expression caused almost entirely by the fact that he can’t fuss with his glasses.  “Experienced,” he mutters.

Chad shrugs.  “So.”  He means it to come out as a rhetorical question, but it ends up being almost aggressive.

“I -- well, you get better at -- that kind of thing -- “  Uryuu bites his lips, skin going a violent red.  Chad can’t help but quirk his lips.  He had never thought that someone as frank and direct as Uryuu would get himself into knots over talking about kissing.  “  -- over time.”

“Yeah,” Chad says, because that is true, he supposes.  “But -- “

“So, since I haven’t done very much, _logically_ ,” Uryuu puts a worrying amount of emphasis on the word, “I must be bad.”

And that just strikes Chad as extremely wrong.  “No,” he says, and it spills out of his mouth so fast it surprises him.

Uryuu, however, completely ignores him.  “Or at the very least I’m definitely not good,” he continues as if Chad hadn’t even spoken.  Silently, Chad wonders how Uryuu manages to be simultaneously so ruthlessly honest and horribly _wrong_.

It’s a battle Chad doesn’t have any idea how to fight, or even when to begin, so instead he counters, “Isn’t the best way to get better to practice?”

Uryuu balks.  “Well that is arguable, but -- there are other ways for me to improve myself.”  

Chad spends a solid minute attempting to figure out what other ways Uryuu could _possibly_  practice, while Uryuu’s hands press sweaty and tension-ridden into his own.

“I...don’t really think there are,” Chad says, trying to pick his words carefully, but he feels like they slide off Uryuu like water against a hydrophobic material.  In the ensuing silence, Chad watches Uryuu’s shoulders hunch under the weight of inadequacy and his jaw tighten with determination.  Uryuu’s never said it, but it’s not that hard to figure it out, and Chad swears he can see the same question Uryuu’s probably asked himself a thousand times pass through his mind once again:  Am I good enough?

He holds Uryuu’s hands more tightly in his, because it is, frankly, a stupid thing to worry about.  The two of them have dealt with kidnapping and training and multiple near-death experiences and Uryuu still finds it within himself to feel inadequate over the most insignificant things.  Chad doesn’t -- get it.

“It’s fine,” Uryuu says, tugging his hands out from Chad’s grip, the rough ends of his fingernails swiping across Chad’s palm.  “I’ll figure it out.”  He steps back, grabbing his bag from the floor in front of Chad’s doo.  “I’ll see you tomorrow.  At school.”

He’s already slipping his shoes over his heels, hand on the doorknob by the time Chad manages to say, “Wait, Uryuu -- “

“Just give me a little time,” he says without turning to face Chad.  “It’s fine.”  He sounds so calm and rational about the whole thing.  Chad wouldn’t be able to put it into words, but the way Uryuu is so casually self-deprecating and insecure under the guise of logic makes something foul knot tightly in his gut.

“It’s not -- “ Chad starts.

But before he can figure out, let alone actually say whatever it was he was going to Uryuu cuts him off with a levelly-toned, “It’s fine,” and closes the door behind him.

Chad stands in his living room, staring blankly at the back of his own door.  He finds his own hand raised as if to stop Uryuu from leaving.  In the few long, empty seconds that follow, he feels as if he had been reaching for something impossible to touch.

Chad realizes he has no idea what just happened.

* * *

 

 

From the other side of the room, Orihime lets her hands drop to her sides.  “Chad, are you okay?”

Chad starts, then lets himself fall out of position.  “What?”

She cocks one hip, tapping her chin.  “Well, you’ve been acting kind of strange recently…” she trails off, staring about a foot above Chad’s head.  A few moments pass in silence while she hums contemplatively.  Chad grunts.  “It’s like,” she says, twisting her toe in the long-undisturbed dust of the abandoned building they’ve been training in.  “Like this.”  She draws all of her limbs in very close to her body and pushes her expression into a caricature of uneasiness.

Chad hums.

Orihime holds the pose for a few seconds longer than is necessary before dropping it.  When Chad doesn’t immediately respond, she bounces back on her heels and ask,  “So, what’s up?”

Chad takes a second to contemplate the weird parallelism of this situation.  Hadn’t Uryuu been doing the exact same thing he’s doing now, only earlier this week?  “It’s...really nothing,” he says, voice falling flat.

Orihime crosses her arms.  “You know Chad, it’s not a good idea to keep all bottled up like that,” she says, a little like she’s lecturing a small child.  Chad ignores how that grates on his nerves.  “Whenever my feelings get all bubbled up like a balloon, I just -- “ she takes in a big breath, puffing up her cheeks and holds it for a long second before blowing it all out, letting her arms fall lax at her sides.  “Or I talk to my brother about it,” she says, shrugging with a serene smile on her face.  It takes Chad a second to recall that her brother is dead.  “And then I feel a lot better!” she says, clasping her hands behind her back.

Chad blinks.  He doesn’t know how to respond to that.  Orihime seems pretty content to fill the silence with awkward, stilted laughter.  She goes on for a solid fifteen seconds before the two of them lapse into silence again.

After a long second, Chad says, “It’s Uryuu.”

Orihime blinks.  “Uryuu?” and then, “Oh.”  Another second passes, and Chad watches her expression turn from vaguely confused to the comical side of worried.  “Are you guys fighting?”

“Uh,” Chad says.  “Not -- I mean -- “ Chad realizes as he struggles to find the words to express himself that he has absolutely no idea what he’s trying to say in the first place.  He has no idea if he and Uryuu are fighting?

“What’s wrong?” Orihime asks, walking over to grip Chad’s hand between two of her own.  The parallelism continues.  Chad isn’t sure he likes it.  “I would be happy to help the two of you with whatever.  Assuming I can help, of course, and even that you’d -- wanna tell me….” she trails off, glancing embarrassedly at the ground.  She’s talking so fast Chad feels like he can’t get a word in edgewise.  Or, at the very least, can’t speak fast enough to keep up with her.  “But you can talk to me, if you want!”

Her hands are so small that she has to use the full breadth of both her hands to wrap all the way around Chad’s palm, and her grip tightens as she asks, rather out of the blue, “You don’t have any siblings, do you, Chad?”

Chad pauses.  “No,” he says.  “I don’t.”

She nods, as if making a decision somewhere in the forefront of her mind.  “Okay, that’s it, then:  if you ever have anything you want to talk about, you can talk to me,” she says.  “I know you’re probably better friends with Ichigo, but…” she trails off for a second, looking down at their joined hands.  “But he’s always busy with Soul Reaper stuff, and -- and all of his own things -- which isn’t his fault, or anything, but sometimes you just need someone to listen, and I -- I can listen for you!”  The last words come out too loudly, reverberating off the walls of their abandoned building.  “I mean, to you,” she says, more quietly.  “Even though you...don’t talk that much.”  Chad watches her cheeks flush a light pink as she realizes -- at least, Chad likes to think -- that Chad hasn’t actually said anything to her throughout the entire conversation.

She picks up her awkward, quiet laughing again.  Chad interrupts her by answering, “Thanks, Orihime.”

“I mean -- “ she continues, as if his speaking had given her an excuse to keep going.  Or like he hadn’t even spoken in the first place.  He wonders if it’s a nervous habit, like Uryuu adjusting his glasses.  “It’s just ‘cause you looked so sad, and worried -- no, sad isn’t the right word.  Stressed?  You looked stressed.  And you barely ever talk to anyone -- well, I suppose you probably talk to Uryuu quite a lot -- “

Orihime continues speaking, Chad knows, but his brain briefly filters all of that out in order to slowly come to the conclusion:  No.  He doesn’t, really.

“And, I mean, Tatsuki has always been there for me to talk to when I need her -- even though there’s a lot of stuff I just can’t talk -- “

Is that what it is?  Does he not talk to Uryuu enough?  That doesn’t make any sense, though, because the problem has more to do with -- Uryuu, and that nervous, foreboding feeling Chad gets when he gets too wrapped up in his own brain and turning that forcedly critical eye on his own thoughts and actions and feelings until he’s examining every minute detail with scientific rigor and he’s thinking himself into the bottomless pits --

“ -- maybe that you don’t really have anyone to talk to -- I didn’t want to be weird or anything -- “

\-- and they were holes that had him spiraling into thought patterns that Chad knows aren’t good, but at the same time they were the holes that allowed him to train for days on end and access that seemingly never-ending drive, and --

“ -- but anyway, all of that aside, you should tell me about what’s going on between you and -- “

Chad places a hand on her shoulder.  She squeaks.

He raises a single finger to his lips.  "Shh."

Chad doesn't know what it is about her expression -- maybe something about the the way the way her the way her cheeks flush red and her lips purse like a seal, but she ends up looking a bit like a water balloon about to burst.  Chad lets his hand fall back to his side, happy for the ensuing silence.  He watches with a strange kind of resignation as Orihime's lips part once again, then immediately snap shut once again.

"It's, uh," Chad starts, before he realizes he has no idea how he wants to finish.  Orihime stares at him with an antsy kind of anticipation.  “Let’s sit down.”

* * *

“Oh, I get it!” Orihime says, holding a finger up.  It kind of reminds Chad of a lightbulb flicking on.  “Ishida probably just feels insecure.”

Chad grunts, nodding.  Orihime’s smile could probably be accurately compared to a hundred-watt bulb.  “How do I fix it, though?”  He feels stupid.  This is a stupid situation to be in.

“You just have to tell him that, no matter what, you still love him.”

Chad likes to think that the reason Orihime chuckles nervously and rephrases, “Or...care about him,” is because the expression on Chad’s face does all the talking for him.  “You know.”

“I don’t think that would work,” Chad says.  Behind Orihime, he catches sight of a couple of her little fairies roughhousing with each other.  Their tiny shouts sound kind of like white noise off a TV.

Orihime cocks her head to the side.  “Why not?”

Chad pauses for a long moment, thinking, before eventually he gives up and shrugs.  Some part of Chad is perfectly aware that Uryuu’s weird labyrinth of insecurities had existed long before Chad was around and will probably continue to exist long after he’s gone.  And that’s not something Chad can just make disappear with a couple of ill-phrased sentences.

“U-Uh...well…” Orihime stutters, hands folded neatly in her lap.  “Well maybe you could try -- “

“That’s not the kind of -- "

Orihime snaps her mouth shut, making a jilted kind of gesture that Chad gathers after a second is meant to signal him to continue.

“Uh, no, you can…” Chad says.

“No, no, I wanna hear what you have to say!”  She holds her hands up in front of her, and takes up laughing nervously again.  “Go ahead.”

“Mm,” Chad says.  He wonders what he could do to make this situation less awkward and comes up totally blank.  “I was gonna say that’s not the kind of…” he trails off, trying to get his thoughts together.  He thinks Orihime might actually be breaking a sweat.  “That’s not really the problem.”

“What isn’t?”

“Like…” Chad raises a hand and puts it to his chest.  “It’s his own kinda...thing.”

Orihime nods so vigorously her bangs start to bounce into strange patterns.  “Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.”  She’s got a determined spark in her eyes.  Chad can’t, for the life of him, figure out why.  “Okay!” she says, holding up a finger again, like she’s about to start lecturing Chad.  “Whenever I feel insecure, I usually -- “ she swallows.  “Well, I usually -- “  Her lips bow into a frown, and she stares down at her lap.  “Well, usually I just deal with it,” she says, chuckling.  This time it’s a little more understated and self-deprecating than nervous.  Chad doesn’t think that’s an improvement.  “But!” she shouts, so loudly it echoes down the halls of their empty building.  “There was this one time when Tatsuki and I were in middle school, and I got a low grade on my art project -- which made me feel really bad, because I thought it was so good!  It was this drawing of all of these cute little rats with little tiny chef hats cooking themselves -- “

‘Cooking themselves’?  Does she mean ‘cooking for themselves’?  Chad thinks about it for hardly a second before he decides he doesn’t particularly want to ask.

“Anyway -- I got a really low grade on it, and I was feeling really down, but Tatsuki told me this story about how, when she was in fifth grade, this one kid had drawn a picture of a rock!”  She starts laughing.  Chad doesn’t get it.  “Like, nothing but a rock!” she says.  “And he got full marks!”

Chad has exactly zero ideas as to why that is so funny.  “Uh.”

“It’s funny because -- I mean obviously if someone can get a perfect grade on something so uncreative, then the reason I got low marks didn’t necessarily have to do with my creative ability.”

“Oh,” Chad says.  He thinks he gets it.  Still doesn’t get why it’s funny, per se, but at least he understands why it would make her feel better.  He’s still curious about….  “Why...did you, then?”

“Tatsuki says it’s because I have a unique aesthetic sense!” Orihime says.  Chad supposes that is one way to put it.

“That’s...an idea.”

Orihime nods.  “Yeah, it’s a good one!”  Suddenly, she stands, pumping one fist beside her head.  “And I’m sure it’ll work!”

Chad blinks.  “Uh, maybe,” he says.

Orihime turns a threatening gaze his way.  “ _Nothing_  will work if you’re not positive about it!”  She grabs him by his hand and tugs him to his feet -- or really just tugs, and Chad complies by moving his own body.  “You can _do_ _it_ _!"_  she says, turning towards the holes in the wall that had likely used to be paned windows.

Chad responds by making a vaguely positive noise.  He glances down at Orihime’s expression, and wonders vaguely how much of her enthusiasm is genuine and how much of it is borne of sheer willpower in the face of the downturn her life has been taking recently.  Losing contact with her best friend, disconnect with Ichigo, not to mention the crisis she had been having over the ability she had as a fighter.  It doesn’t elude Chad how much all of that would start to stack up.

Possibly, Chad could put her enthusiasm down the desire not to lose one more thing in her life -- no matter how insignificant to her it may be.

Chad places a hand on her shoulder.  “I’ll try it,” he says.

Orihime smiles.  “Good.”

It is an idea, after all.  That’s much farther than he had gotten before.

* * *

 

 

“So,” Chad says.  The two of them are walking down the street, away from their school and towards the train station.  It’s late, only a few stray rays of sunlight peeking over the tops of Karakura’s low-rise buildings, but despite the hour and the informal setting, Uryuu is still walking as far away from Chad as he possibly can be, while still staying on the sidewalk.  “There was this one time….”

Uryuu glances up at him.  “What?”  

Chad swallows.  “There was this one time I was making out with this girl….”  In all honesty, Chad had been thinking about how to say this all day, and judging by the way Uryuu raises his eyebrows, he can tell.  Or, maybe it’s just surprise at the topic.  Or the place.  Chad doesn’t know.

“Are you even into girls?”

Or that.

Chad shrugs noncommittally, making a noise somewhere low in his throat that sounds a bit like a more guttural version of ‘I don’t know’.

Uryuu makes a similar noise, clasping his bag tightly in front of him.  For a moment Chad is afraid he’s accidentally stumbled over another insecurity while he was trying to address the current one, the image of a snowball tumbling down a hill, growing larger and faster, mass and velocity increasing as the seconds tick by, momentum becoming an incomprehensibly vast number in a matter of minutes until there’s this enormous hunk of ice and snow sitting at the bottom of the hill, too large to be dealt with.

Chad thinks about it for a moment.  He decides it’s probably not an issue.  He’s both strong and patient.

But Uryuu doesn’t say anything of the like, just clears his throat.  “Anyway, as you were saying?”

“Uh,” Chad says.  “Right.”  He had completely lost his train of thought.  “Well, she was really -- short.”  Chad motions to approximate a height that’s really only a few inches shorter than Uryuu, who shoots his hand a look that Chad honestly can’t peg as more curious or judging.  “Like, shorter than you.”  Hm.  Definitely more judging.

“And she kept, um.”  Chad stares at Uryuu, gazing up at him with a forcedly neutral expression, and tries to find a way to phrase what he wants to say in a more delicate way.  Or is indelicate more funny?  Does Uryuu find that kind of thing funny?  Has he waited so long to speak that it’s not going to be funny no matter what he says?

(Offhandedly, Chad wonders if this is what Uryuu’s brain is like all the time.)

Deciding to just go for it, Chad finishes, “Accidentally kneeing me in the dick.”

Uryuu inhales sharply, and breathes in some of his own spit in the process, Chad figures, based off the way he starts coughing.  He stops in the middle of the sidewalk as Uryuu doubles over, continuing to cough into his hand.  After a moment, a woman passes by the two of them, very pointedly stepping out into the street in order to get around the roadblock the both of them present.  After a moment, Chad raises a hand to thunk Uryuu on the back.

“Sorry,” Uryuu says when he finally seems to be finished.  “I was, uh.”  He pauses.  “I don’t really.  I wasn’t expecting that, sorry.”

Chad can’t help but think that choking on his own spit was a bit of an extreme reaction.  “That’s...alright,” he says, patting Uryuu on the back again.  He decides, in that moment, that he has no future as a comedian.

“Uh, why are you telling me this?”

“I thought it might -- “ Chad swallows.  “You haven’t screwed up that bad.”

Uryuu stares at him, eyes wide.  For some strange reason is strikes Chad that he looks somewhat like a deer in the headlights, and for some even stranger reason Chad thinks that’s utterly adorable.  “Well -- “  A passerby cranes his head at an awkward angle to give the both of them a judging look as he walks out into the street in order to get around the block they present in the sidewalk.  “We should get moving again,” Uryuu says.

“Right.”

They start walking down the sidewalk again, and Uryuu doesn’t pause before continuing.  “I don’t see your point.”

“I thought it might make you...feel better.”

Uryuu stares up at him.  It’s somewhat accusatory, and Chad has no idea why.  “It’s not an emotional kind of thing.”

Chad grunts.  He does not believe that for a second.

“Then what is it?”

Uryuu pushes up the bridge of his glasses.  “Logic,” he says.

Chad makes an unimpressed noise.

“I’m only telling the truth,” Uryuu says.  

Chad takes a deep breath in, and stops thinking.  He stops Uryuu with a hand on his shoulder, halting them both in the middle of the sidewalk.  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say that it doesn’t make any sense -- “

Chad leans down and kisses him.

Uryuu doesn’t flinch away.  He doesn’t do anything, actually, for a long moment.  But it ends up being like an object changing the direction of its velocity, moving from negative to positive after having come to a complete stop before it can start moving again.  After a second he starts to move his lips against Chad’s, kissing him back.

Chad threads his fingers through Uryuu’s hair.  Playing word games with Uryuu is like -- like a curve approaching an asymptote, getting closer and closer ad infinitum but never touching, never getting anywhere.  

Asymptotes are invisible -- not something you can see, but an observable phenomenon.  There are logical ways to drive them, an equation, but it’s still only defining the confines of an unknowable entity.  A wall extending into infinity, an unbreachable limit.

Chad’s sure Uryuu has very, very many limits of that sense, but this particular one comes to him as Uryukisses him back with the same vigor he always had, like each moment is an experience in an of itself:  Uryuu is a lot less logical than he pretends to be.

At least, it’s true as far as Chad can tell, because his actions consistently do not match up with his words.  He spends his time thinking and overthinking and overthinking again, when he would probably be better off just doing what feels right, not doubting himself -- Chad could talk to Uryuu for infinity, play at convincing him of his own flawed thinking and it would be like trying to cross an invisible line that extended into forever, that little fraction of a fraction of a space still too large a gap to connect.

But this -- he tilts Uryuu’s head up and kisses him like he’s worth everything, good enough for anything, good enough for Chad, and deep in his gut the intuitive certainty settles that Uryuu will get it.  

It’s not the lack of words that’s the problem, but the lack of purposeful action.  The way Uryuu kisses him back is enough to reassure Chad of that -- and the distant, distracted way Uryuu breathes into his mouth, “Yasutora,” doesn’t shake Chad’s conviction.

They stand in almost total darkness when Chad finally pulls away, only lit by the faint yellow glare of the streetlamps.  He leaves his hand cradling the back of Uryuu’s head.  “Was that good?”

“Yeah,” Uryuu responds.  Chad doesn’t even pretend to not be satisfied with how breathy his voice sounds.

“Then you’re fine,” Chad says, slipping his arm around Uryuu’s shoulders, tucking Uryuu’s body against his.  The way Uryuu acquiesces, letting his neck go slack against Chad’s shoulder, feels kind of like touching infinity.

Uryuu’s doesn’t say anything other than a quiet, mumbled, “Oh,” into the silence.  It’s an understated reaction for him.

Chad clears his throat, preparing to answer an unvoiced question.  “It’s that easy,” he says.

Uryuu chuckles against him.  His shoulder fits easily into the crook of Chad’s arm, so closely he can feel every little disruption and tremor in Uryuu’s body.  “Is it?”

Chad nods.  “Yeah.”  He feels like he’s being much too serious for the way Uryuu laughs afterwards.

The two of them start walking again.  “I don’t -- I don’t get you,” Uryuu says. Chad blinks.  He hadn’t been expecting their conversation to continue.  “I don’t understand how you think.”

Uryuu is probably too wrapped up in trying to figure out how his own thoughts work.  Chad knows for sure he has no idea what goes on up there.

“And I don’t get how you can just -- _do_  something, and it makes me feel better.”  He says do with an odd kind of disdain.  It almost makes Chad laugh, but Uryuu doesn’t notice.  “It doesn’t make any sense.”

Chad takes a second to compose himself, then says, “Actions speak louder than words.”  He only receives a glare in return -- the disdainful kind, from over the top rim of Uryuu’s glasses.  After a pause, Chad continues, “You think too much.”

Uryuu scoffs.  It’s staged, played-up.  He doesn’t move out of Chad’s grip.  “I do not!”

Chad makes a noise that sounds a little bit like disbelief.

“Oh, shut up!”  He elbows Chad in the stomach with the little bit of space he has.  It has no force behind it.

“I didn’t say anything.”

Derisively, Uryuu responds, “You know what I mean.”

A long moment passes in silence, the sound of their sneakers on the cement the only sounds other than the wind whistling past to fill the night.  Tightening his grip around Uryuu’s shoulders, Chad says, “But Uryuu, that’s not logical.”

Uryuu blinks.  “What?”

Chad swallows.  He had been trying to make a joke.  Distantly, he wonders if Uryuu even likes jokes.  “That’s not -- because you were all -- “  Withdrawing his arm from around Uryuu’s shoulder, Chad schools his expression, straightens his shoulders, and uses one hand to push up an imaginary pair of glasses.

Uryuu’s jaw drops.  “Are you...making fun of me?”

Nervously, Chad glances down.  “Uh.”

Uryuu laughs.  It’s small -- more like a chuckle, really.  Then he pushes up his glasses.  If he were anyone else, Chad would sigh.

“I could probably use it,” Uryuu says.  “I’ve...been a little up in my own head.  Recently.”

Chad grunts in agreement.

“I don’t look like that though,” Uryuu insists.

Chad pauses.  “Like...what?”

Uryuu shifts his shoulders, rolling them and eventually settling them into a position that looks exactly the same as the one he had been in ten seconds before.  “Like this.”

“Uh,” Chad says.

“I don’t!” Uryuu insists.

Chad shrugs.

Uryuu makes some kind of noise that seems to be simultaneously annoyed and not.  Chad can’t really explain it.

But it’s whatever.  The not-annoyed part of Uryuu is the part that’s really important, and he goes ahead and wraps his arms around Uryuu’s shoulders again.  Uryuu leans into the touch.

Belatedly, he realizes that they’ve almost definitely missed their train.

Chad can’t find it within himself to care.

**Author's Note:**

> i feel like the more of these i write the more i project the tattered state of my own psyche onto Uryuu


End file.
